How a Conspiracy Theorist’s Call About a Dirty Bomb Shut Down Part of a Port

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Trucks with containers line up at the Port of Charleston in South Carolina. The port was closed down for several hours after a conspiracy theorist reported a dirty bomb on a ship.CreditAnne McQuary for The New York Times

A section of the Port of Charleston in South Carolina was shut down for several hours Wednesday night after a tip from a far-right YouTube conspiracy theorist warned that a dirty bomb might be on a container ship moored there, officials said.

A section of the Port of Charleston was closed for about seven hours as nearly a dozen federal, state and local agencies searched and turned up nothing.

The episode began around 8 p.m. on Wednesday when the Coast Guard said it received two phone calls about a potential dirty bomb — a crude explosive rigged to spray radioactive material — aboard the container ship Maersk Memphis, Lt. James B. Zorn, a Coast Guard spokesman, said on Thursday.

#Update A 1 NM safety zone has been established around the vessel while law enforcement authorities investigate the threat.

Four containers aboard the ship were scanned and the section of the port that had been closed, the Wando terminal, was reopened around 3:30 a.m. on Thursday.

Lieutenant Zorn said the two separate calls appeared to have been prompted by a YouTube posting and that agencies responded out of “an abundance of caution.”

What appeared to be an account of one call was posted to YouTube on Wednesday. In it, George Webb, a prolific social media conspiracy theorist, describes his conversation with the Coast Guard.

“Well I just got off the phone with the Coast Guard in South Carolina, and they were very obviously, you know, hesitant to call out all the dogs and call out all the radiation meters and all that without knowing who our source is,” he said in the post, which was published on Wednesday.

He described the anonymous sources who he said gave him information on a bomb at the port as being in the Midwest and that they were fearful of reprisals from Andrew G. McCabe, the acting director of the F.B.I.

“These are American patriots who spent decades even before D.H.S. was formed in service to our country saving our country from terrorists’ attacks,” Mr. Webb said, referring to the Department of Homeland Security.

The Maersk Memphis, which was built in 2007 and sails under the American flag for Maersk Line, a United States corporation, arrived at the port on Wednesday evening, Signe Brink Wagner, a company spokeswoman, said in an email.

“When informed about the threat, the vessel was immediately evacuated and all crew brought safely ashore,” she wrote. “We expect the vessel will resume its voyage according to schedule.”

Erin P. Dhand, a spokeswoman for the operator of the port, South Carolina Ports Authority, said in a statement on Thursday that it was “operating as usual with minimal impacts to our operations from last night’s incident.”

The United States Coast Guard said on Twitter that the person who reported the threat was being questioned by the authorities. But it was not clear which agency had detained the person, who was not identified.

Lieutenant Zorn would not name “the original reporting source” being questioned by the authorities, and the Coast Guard referred calls to the F.B.I. Don Wood, a supervisory special agent for the F.B.I. field office in Columbia, S.C., said the agency was investigating but had not detained anyone.

Mr. Webb did not respond to messages left on his social media accounts.

Mr. Webb, who uses the handle TruthLeaks on his Twitter account, described himself as “Trying to stop US federal law enforcement involvement in drug corruption and harassment programs” and on his YouTube channel as “Reporting on Political Corruption.”

His YouTube channel lists titles like “I’ve Further Evidence Linking Hillary To The Murder Of Seth Rich.” Mr. Rich was a Democratic National Committee staff member and the subject of a stubborn but quashed conspiracy theory by right-wing media linking his murder with the email hacks that helped President Trump’s campaign.

With almost 17,000 followers on Twitter and nearly 40,000 subscribers on YouTube, Mr. Webb does not have the reach of prominent conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones and his organization Infowars. (Mr. Jones has 643,000 followers on Twitter and his Alex Jones Channel on YouTube has more than 2 million subscribers.)

The history of conspiracy theories dates back to Revolutionary War times, Chip Berlet, a researcher of radical-right movements and retired analyst at Political Research Associates, a left-leaning think tank in Somerville, Mass., said on Thursday. Social media quickly and widely spreads them in ways that make them difficult to refute, he added.

He said it is not unusual for the authorities to get tips from conspiracy theorists and it is difficult to evaluate the information.

“The threat might be real,” he said. “It is very difficult to sort out the response. In many cases the proper response is you have to take it seriously.”